[Priest] 5.2 PTR notes

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

Power Word: Solace has been redesigned.
Power Word: Solace replaces Holy Fire. It deals the same damage and interacts with other spells and abilities in the same manner, but is instant, costs no mana, and restores 1% of maximum mana on each cast.
Dominate Mind now has a 1.8 second cast time (was 2.5 seconds).
Angelic Feather now has a 6 second duration (was 4 seconds).
Body and Soul now has a 3 second duration (was 4 seconds).
Glyph of Holy Fire has been redesigned. It now increases the range of Holy Fire, Smite, and Power Word: Solace by 10 yards.
Discipline
Focused Will now reduces damage taken by 15% per stack, with a limit of 2 stacks.
Spirit Shell no longer benefits from Mastery, and now properly includes the benefits of Divine Aegis and critical effect chance.
Rapture now provides mana equal to 250% (was 200%) of the Priest's Spirit, but no longer benefits from Spirit provided by short duration bonuses.

Most of the changes are tooltip updates but we should start finally talking about the changes that ARE happening rather then what we want to happen.

This is simply my healing perspective but you are free to talk about shadow.

The rapture nerf is fine, making feathers more attractive is fine, but I am very confused about the holy fire glyph change/solace change.

1, mindbender still gives you more mana and probably does more dmg

2. disc now has even less glyphs then before!!!?? only one semi useful penance glyph?

It mostly effects disc with the glyphs like i said but AA is already annoying enough to keep up during heavy healing and now it will be worse unless solace is included in evangelism. If it is then it is pretty much mandatory to take for disc simply for quality of life...

I like the rapture change (kinda needed as we get better gear, and will affect 25 more than 10). I really like the feather change as well, the spell is fun but outright inferior to body and soul atm, I fear that it'll be bad on most fights despite the buff though (you simply can't afford to 'waste' globals that often).

Doing some napkin math (being half asleep) solace and mindbender comes out at almost exactly the same regen (if both are used on cd, obviously including shadowfiend for solace), if this is correct I kinda like it, giving more options for our regen talent (and I didn't like the old solace at all).

The new 'glyph of holy fire' seems kinda cute to me (I actually like changing the glyphs from fight to fight and this seems like another situational one, unlike the old must have), though they really need to add offensive penance to it as well. If the new solace turns out to be outright inferior to mindbender/doesn't work with evengalism+atonement and I end up with cast time on holy fire once more it'll be really fucking annoying though (a huge quality of life 'nerf', yet barely nerfs our output).

Solace needs to generate slightly more mana than Mindbender because the extra globals will not be worth it otherwise. If PW:Solace (as I suggested in another thread) effects (for Disc) Atonement then it may be worth using, but the point remains that while moving Priests have a lot to do: Penance, PoM, PW:S, Renew, Dispells etc. PW:S should give maybe 5% max mana more than Mindbender to make it worth using.

Rapture change was obviously going to happen. Surprised SS or Holy wasn't touched at all, but maybe they'll get changes later on.

Solace needs to generate slightly more mana than Mindbender because the extra globals will not be worth it otherwise. If PW:Solace (as I suggested in another thread) effects (for Disc) Atonement then it may be worth using, but the point remains that while moving Priests have a lot to do: Penance, PoM, PW:S, Renew, Dispells etc. PW:S should give maybe 5% max mana more than Mindbender to make it worth using.

Rapture change was obviously going to happen. Surprised SS or Holy wasn't touched at all, but maybe they'll get changes later on.

They have said multiple times they don't want PW:Solace to be rotational or something like that. If you played in the PTR, it was 3% and completely OP on the mana return.

If it was added to atonement it would be doing 3 things at once: Damage, Healing, and returning mana. That's not going to happen (but here's to hoping).

They have said multiple times they don't want PW:Solace to be rotational or something like that. If you played in the PTR, it was 3% and completely OP on the mana return.

If it was added to atonement it would be doing 3 things at once: Damage, Healing, and returning mana. That's not going to happen (but here's to hoping).

If you're going to be using 6x as many globals (compared to Mindbender) and get equal mana, while providing less damage (Mindbender deals *huge* damage) and providing less healing (spending 6x globals = less heals going out) you're never going to take PW:Solace. Use some common sense please, this is where Solace needs to be with regards to competition vs Mindbender:

Solace > Mindbender on mana return if Solace is used perfectly
Solace > Mindbender on damage if used perfectly
Solace > Mindbender on healing (with regards to, does it effect atonement etc) if used perfectly

Then:

Solace = Mindbender if used well for mana
Solace < Mindbender if used well for damage
Solace > Mindbender if used well for healing

Then:

Solace < Mindbender if used poorly for mana
Solace < Mindbender if used poorly for damage
Solace = Mindbender if used poorly for healing

There would be zero point in taking PW:S if it a) costs more globals to yield the -same- mana return (seriously, Mindbender never dies either), does less damage and provides the Priest less healing (due to the number of globals required to use to yield the -same- mana return). Solace should be better than Mindbender if the Priest is skilled, that's how I always thought Solace was supposed to be designed: Mindbender would fill the roll in fights where you are unsure where you can heal (if at all) and Solace would then take it's place when you are 100% certain of a fight and can make intelligent decisions based on your knowledge.

Assuming that solace works with evengalism/atonement like holy fire does currently you'd end up using it almost every time it came of cd anyways (except under spirit shell/very high damage phases). If so they could just change the talent to 'using holy fire now gives you 1% mana' though, most likely this change won't result in a changed playstyle at all (apart from possibly giving us options in t3). Depending on how the fights in 5.2 are designed I think this may be it for disc pve wise or we'll see SS cd increased to 90 seconds as well (if so I'd like to see a small tankhealing buff too).

I would actually like to see disc redesigned with a lot less reliance on PoH but I guess blizzard have more pressing issues, both holy (a mana buff) and shadow (scaling) could definitely use some love.

I'm REALLY LOOKING FORWARD to get those lovely warriors (that will cry rivers because of second wind and rage from cc gains) sitting on me unloading like 6 Overpowers while under their goddamn stacked CDs.

Its still early, i was quite exited for shadow changes and at the end i just found a slight nerf to GoSac for my Lock.

Wondering about the Disc changes that were supposed to be hotfixed over a month ago. Both the Divine Aegis and PWS changes were apparently implemented pre-5.1 and only the tooltips were left unchanged. Any1 know why they are still in 5.2 patch notes as well?

Power Word: Solace has been redesigned.
Power Word: Solace replaces Holy Fire. It deals the same damage and interacts with other spells and abilities in the same manner, but is instant, costs no mana, and restores 1% of maximum mana on each cast.
Dominate Mind now has a 1.8 second cast time (was 2.5 seconds).
Angelic Feather now has a 6 second duration (was 4 seconds).
Body and Soul now has a 3 second duration (was 4 seconds).
Glyph of Holy Fire has been redesigned. It now increases the range of Holy Fire, Smite, and Power Word: Solace by 10 yards.
Discipline
Focused Will now reduces damage taken by 15% per stack, with a limit of 2 stacks.
Spirit Shell no longer benefits from Mastery, and now properly includes the benefits of Divine Aegis and critical effect chance.
Rapture now provides mana equal to 250% (was 200%) of the Priest's Spirit, but no longer benefits from Spirit provided by short duration bonuses.

What this all means:

Disc in PvP has slightly improved survivability, 50% more spirit from Rapture, insufficient CC or escape spells. Still not viable in PvP compared to other healers.

Disc in PvE eats a mana nerf do to removal of spirit procs, which was necessary, and eats a considerable nerf to Spirit Shell, which was justified as well. But I'm not sure I like how they did it.

Holy in PvE and PvP is still not viable. And that is sad.

Shadow in PvP wasn't touched.

Shadow in PvE has scaling issues (Single target and resource generation) that will be more and more problematic as gear progresses.

For those that don´t know how to read...the new patch will be a BIG NERF to Disc Priests!

They will nerf the current range of spells and add a glyph to make it 40 again. They will remove our option to have mindbender + insta Holy Fire and instead you will have to choose between insta HF(with mana return) and mindbender. And the last blow is the nerf on Rapture. The rest are all just tooltip updates and a minor buff to Angelic feather (that btw I like). There is NO solid changes here. Disc priests on PvP will have no love....none.